A Year of Miracles: Daily Devotions and Reflectionsby Marianne Williamson

In A Year of Miracles, Marianne Williamson, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the classic A Return to Love and world-renowned teacher, offers a daily devotional that helps us develop a positive, loving mindset and encourages us to live our best selves to bring miracles into our lives.

Williamson has taught millions around the world the simple yet profound lesson that has helped them tap into the divine within themselves and lead a happier, more fulfilled existence: How we think determines how we live. If you change your thoughts, you can change your reality. If you strive to put your best self forward, the universe responds, actively helping you, creating miracles that allow you to flourish.

A Year of Miracles is her collection of 365 spiritual readings, including prayers, meditations, declarations, and affirmations—one for each day of the year—that offer guidance, support, and enlightenment to focus your thinking. With this thoughtful meditative devotional, you can stay mindful, hopeful, and centered every day, producing miracles in your life.

Combining wisdom drawn from her bestselling books as well as fresh insight, A Year of Miracles helps enhance your spiritual journey and opens your eyes to see God acting through the universe to provide all that you need.

EXCERPT

A miracle is a shift in thinking, a shift from fear to love. At first glance, that sounds a bit ridiculous. How does shifting a thought cause a miraculous change? And yet it does exactly that. For every thought we think creates form on some level. A simple thought—seemingly trivial or even unimportant—carries within it the power to move mountains. And that is the least it can do. There is no worldly power—no money, no technology, no business or government—that can match in power the power we wield by simply using our minds for the purposes of love.

“I love, I love!” you might say. And of course you love.

We all do. The problem, however, is that we do not love only. We love, but then we take it back. We love, but then we stop when it becomes inconvenient. We love, but only until the ego is challenged by the thought of risk.

And so it is that while we love, we do not wield the power of love. We love, but we do not love only. And so we love, but we do not work miracles.

The purpose of this book is to help guide your thinking to the thoughts of love that will break the chains of fear that bind you. One moment, one situation, one thought at a time, we can evolve beyond the lower thought forms that keep us bound. And in so doing, we become miracle-workers, working miracles for ourselves and for all the world.

The first place to start working miracles is not in the world around you, but in yourself. You’re not going to work a miracle in your environment, but in your mind.

Because mind is Cause and the world is Effect, we change the world by changing the thoughts we think about the world.

Begin with a simple step:

Put down this book and look around you. Look at the chair you’re sitting on, or the table that’s next to you, or the walls around you. And ask yourself this: What are my thoughts about this chair, or this table, or this wall?

That they’re not good enough, or nice enough? Or do I never really think about them all, just taking them for granted?

Now try a simple shift: Wow, how lucky I am to have a chair.

Billions of people do not. How fortunate I am to have a table. Billions of people do not. And how lucky I am to have walls around me. Billions of people do not.

Notice the slight energetic shift that occurred within you when you made that change, how your thinking went from a kind of hard place to someplace softer, from somewhere floating around your head to someplace deep within your heart.

And now know this: YOU JUST SHIFTED THE UNIVERSE.

Yes, that is what I said.

The wind currents at the North Pole are affected when a butterfly flaps its wings in South America, and the entire world is affected by every thought you think. You don’t have to believe this idea, of course. A miracle-worker simply knows it.

Anyone can be a miracle-worker— Anyone who chooses to be. Anyone can hear the sound of an ancient melody that calls to all of us, beckoning us to remember who we truly are and what power we have. A miracle-worker accepts the idea that every thought has an effect not only on the one who thinks it but on everyone else as well.

It isn’t necessary to believe any of this. This is a guidebook, not a doctrine. Simply try it out. And watch things change.

So we’ve already established that you might not have had a clue about the significance of your chair, or your table, or your wall. And yet the meaning that we ascribe to anything will determine what meaning it ultimately has for us. Think something isn’t good enough, and it never will be. Think something is wonderful, and it will only get better.

So thoughts like this are miraculous thoughts:

I give thanks for this chair, for this table, for this wall.

I remember with compassion those who do not have such simple amenities, and I pray they will receive what they need.

I surrender myself, that I might be used in bringing the end of suffering to all the world.

Now what did such thoughts just do for you? Not for others, but for you?

They established you within a different corner of the universe.

You moved from someone with a slightly open heart to someone with a more fully opened heart. And the more open your heart, the more miracles you’ll receive.

For miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. When you choose to love, you choose to work miracles.

What follows are 365 readings that, when read daily, encourage you to stay focused on love and to avoid the distractions of fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, and everything else that is not built on love. It is this daily choice to think with love that determines what miracles come into our lives. The universe is ready to bless you. Are you ready to receive these gifts? My prayer is that this book will help you.

Day 1

The universe is conspiring in every moment to bring me happiness and peace.

The universe is not random but intentional. It reflects the will of God, the cosmic Thought driving all things toward greater perfection.

My ego mind—my own self-hatred masquerading as self-love— Would point me always in the direction of fear, luring me toward the blaming thought, the attack or defense, the perception of guilt in myself or others. Its goal is my suffering, or the hell of my own illusions.

The spirit within leads only to joy, as it inspires me to see the love in everyone and the possibility of miracles that lie inherent in all things. The universe itself is the handwriting of God, as He constantly creates and re-creates the perfection that He is. Within that perfection I have my true being, and within my true being I am happy and at peace.

Today I will not be tempted to wander the byroads of pain, but rather I will set my feet upon the path of joy and peace. May the spirit of God protect my mind from any forces of fear that would divert my thinking. May I not be deceived into a false belief in the validity of guilt and attack, but rather may I be constantly uplifted to the divine perceptions of innocence and love. For there shall I experience the bliss of God’s creation.

Excerpted from A YEAR OF MIRACLES by Marianne Williamson, copyright 2013. Reprinted with permission by HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers